Henri Richard, the former chief marketing and sales officer with Advanced Micro Devices, is joining Freescale Semiconductor to lead the chip maker"s sales and marketing divisions. Richard, who will hold the title of senior vice president, will join the Austin, Texas, company later in September, according to a statement released Sept. 5. On Aug. 22, Richard announced that he would leave AMD after working as the chip maker"s top salesman since 2002. During those five years, Richard also worked as one of AMD"s top spokesman as the company looked to take market share away from the much larger Intel.
"Henri is a respected veteran of our industry and I am glad he has chosen to join the Freescale team," Michel Mayer, Freescale"s chairman and CEO, wrote in a statement. "His expertise in developing customer solutions will accelerate our growth initiatives and build on Freescale"s strong market position." Richard left AMD, which is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., as the company prepared to release its much anticipated quad-core Opteron processor #151;"Barcelona"—within the third quarter of this year. The company has a press conference scheduled for Sept. 10.